Predatory Open Access in Rehabilitation

Publication date: Available online 20 January 2017
Source:Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Author(s): Andrea Manca, Gianluca Martinez, Lucia Cugusi, Daniele Dragone, Giuseppe Mercuro, Franca Deriu
Increasingly scholars and researchers are being solicited by predatory "open access" journals seeking manuscript submissions and abusing the author-pays model by charging authors with publishing fees without any or proper peer review. Such questionable editorial practices are threatening the reputation and credibility of scholarly publishing. To date no investigation has been conducted on this phenomenon in the field of rehabilitation. The present study attempts to identify specific predatory journals operating in this field, to quantify the phenomenon and its geographical distribution. Beall's list has been used to this end which, although not perfect, is a comprehensive and up-to-date report of predatory publishers. Of the 1,113 publishers on the list, 59 journals were identified, for a total of 5,610 published articles. The median number of articles published by each journal was 21 and the median amount of the article processing charges was 499 USD. Only 1 out of 59 journals was included in the Directory of Open Access Journals while 7 (12%) were indexed by PubMed. Most of the publishers were based in India (36%) followed by the USA (25%) and Pakistan (5%) and 25% were without a verifiable address.The data indicate that the threat of predatory publishing in rehabilitation is real. Physiatrists, physiotherapists, researchers and academics operating in this field are advised to use the tools available so as to recognize predatory practices before considering publishing in open-access journals.



http://ift.tt/2jJhmTu